20 December 2012
A scream cut through the empty streets of Gaior. The cloud mist laid heavily this morning in the remote village at the outskirts of the Cloud Realm. Another scream came, and then another.
"Push! Again, that's it! Push harder! Now!" The old midwife stood between Ialei's legs, ready to grab the baby.
Ialei was soaking in sweat as she tried to control her breathing.
"Hold my hand! You can do it, Ia! Fight the pain!" Marthos said, sitting next to her.
Her next scream was so long it terrified him but then it was replaced by another, much higher scream.
"There, there," the midwife said as she rose with the baby, covered with the Ialei's blood.
Marthos rushed up to take a look. "Ialei, look! It's a girl!" he said and started laughing, "it's a girl!"
Ialei smiled through her fatigue. "Her name will be Dionys. Come here, I want to hold her!"
The midwife gave him the baby and he took a step towards Ialei but stopped in the motion as his smile changed into a face Ialei never had seen on him.
"What is it?" She tried to laugh away his grim look. "Let me see her!"
Marthos couldn't hear her. "No... It can't be." he said in a low voice.
Ialei rose in the bed "What?!"
The midwife crept up on him and with a bored face she peaked into the rags. "Her eyes are glowing. M'am, you have borne a cloud child. The Cloud Sisters will take her now." She motioned to Marthos to give her the baby. "Come now," she urged.
Marthos broke down on his knees and looked down on the newborn. He cleaned the baby's face and cried.
Ialei forced herself up to the edge of the bed with shaking arms. After ten hours of labor she could barely sit without falling into a faint. She wanted to scream to the old hag to leave them and their baby alone, but her mouth wouldn't obey her. All she could do was utter a gasped "No..."
Marthos looked at the crone's withered face and placed the baby in her cold, bony fingers. Then he came up to Ialei and gently laid her back down. "There is nothing we can do, love."
Ialei shook her head and stared at the rags as they were carried away with her baby in them. The screams got more intense as the midwife closed on the door, as if the baby felt the separation as well. She wanted so much to run after them, and kill the old lady and anyone who would take her baby, but all her strength was gone now. Her body felt like it was held back by a sack of stones. "No, no, no... This isn't happening. Why us? Marthos, do something. Save my baby..."
He heard her but there was nothing he could do. They would never be able to hide a cloud child, and not in this small village.
The old woman turned around at the door and, with a voice filled with such coldness that the room seemed to freeze in time for the young couple, she said "What did you say her name was?"
Dionys - The High Sister (part 1) • Opuss № I